I love seeing a book of my own out in the wild... this copy of Coffee House arrived at its new home this morning and probably won’t look this new for long but I’m putting a tick in the win column over making the cover the same colour as this coffee:
Here’s that very same book a day or so later:
I love writing books.
It’s been a full-on week so far out here. Carved my way with a scythe through a stack of day-job work, spent some time with my buddy Adrian beating the living daylights out of that new Gretsch, walked across the hills with Hector to the tune of about 16,000 steps a day (I must stop looking at that stupid app thing) and I’m beat. I also need a good night’s sleep and a shave.
It’s my small persons eighteenth birthday in about ten weeks. After much discussion, I reluctantly agreed that maybe… just maybe… it would be OK if she went away by herself (with a friend) somewhere exciting. She floated Paris as an idea but I think I’ve rewired that machine so that Paris now means Florence. Paris is cool and everything… but for a young girl… I wasn’t super happy about that. Florence on the other hand is reasonably small and super safe so far as I have ever seen when I’ve been out there.
It’s a big step for me to cope with this. We have reached an age in which some of her friends now have cars and drive. An age in which she can make plans that involve aeroplanes… and fistfuls of other unholy things. It scares me to fucking death and back again.
There is only one thing for it. I’m going to print a few of these and hide them in her pockets, suitcase, purse… you name it, I will find a home for it:
I heard a good line on a TV show tonight. It goes like this: “It’s become fashionable not to be believe in anything except your own personal gain.”
There’s more truth in that one line than there is on the whole front page of the BBC News site - or any news site for that matter - but maybe one day soon, the nation will swing back and start believing in satyrs and Gef the talking mongoose again... now there’s a story you don’t hear very often anymore:
Look it up.
Meanwhile, I spent most of the afternoon working on a song called The Wolves In The Radio (that I’m loving very much) and any moment now, I’m heading to the place known as ‘ratting a pencil between your teeth’ to wrap up something I started on yesterday before the threads of it disappear forever.
...and then I might just abandon what remains of the day and read.
And maybe I should finish off those cookies before they go stale. That would be a rea shame.